Pew study: Fox News reports three times more news than MSNBC

posted at 10:01 pm on March 18, 2013 by Mary Katharine Ham

Editor’s Note: My apologies that this piece showed up in draft form on the blog earlier tonight. I typoed in the worst place possible while scheduling it, making it appear in the 7 p.m. hour instead of the 10 p.m.

In all the hand-wringing over commentary vs. news on cable networks, we are offered Fox News as reliant on right-leaning commentary and MSNBC as its left-leaning foil, while CNN sits in the middle with lots of news gathering and no ratings. In reality, Fox News (45-55) is much more comparable with CNN (55-45) in its percentage of straight news vs. commentary, while MSNBC is far out on a limb, relying on commentary for a staggering 85 percent of its programming.

CNN, which has branded itself around reporting resources and reach, cut back between 2007 and 2012 on two areas tied to that brand—in-depth story packages and live event coverage. Even so, CNN is the only one of the three big cable news channels to produce more straight reporting than commentary over all. At the other end of that spectrum lies MSNBC, where opinion fills a full 85% of the channel’s airtime.

Bret Baier is right to stress that his show and much of the daytime line-up is straight news reporting, differentiated from prime time shows dominated by opinion. It would seem MSNBC has almost no such programming to point to. It’s We Report, You Decide vs. We Decide Pretty Much 24/7.

Overall, cable news outlets are devoting 63 percent of their airtime to commentary and 37 percent to reporting, responding a combination of audience demands and a trend toward saving money by cutting down on reporting resources. But the next time you hear a liberal academic bemoaning the loss of reported news and the rise of—gasp! O’Reilly or Beck— you can inform him or her that it is CNN and Fox that are fighting the trend and MSNBC that’s bringing everybody’s average waaaaay down. CNN produces 55 percent of its programming in news and Fox, 45 percent. MSNBC, a paltry 15 percent. I have a feeling the folks at NPR, who however slanted certainly report lots of news, are probably quietly looking down their noses at this crew.

In other findings, local TV may be feeling the pinch these days in the way newspapers have for several years. Pew found local newscasts have responded by increasing coverage of those local news favorites—traffic, sports, weather, traffic, sports, weather, and traffic, and sports, and weather. Those subjects make up 40 percent of local news coverage, as I know well from my time in local newspapers and radio.

But my takeaway? Sure, Fox News and MSNBC would be perfectly appropriate foils for each other on the news scene…if Fox only dropped two thirds of its news coverage. As it is, Fox is slimed while MSNBC is praised. Instead of talking about Fox as if it’s a “conservative” version of MSNBC, we should be talking about how it’s a successful version of CNN, marrying commentary and reporting in almost equal measure and making it work. (Hm, maybe there’s a reason CNN doesn’t do much commentary, if this is how it turns out.)

Full disclosure: I am a contract employee of Fox News as a contributor.

It all makes sense. When is the last time Obama had a press conference where he had tough questions? When has he ever answered a question without filibustering? When has Obama taken responsibility for anything? When was the last time Obama paid his own way with honest money?When was the last time Obama did something good for humanity? The news blackout will continue.

Yes, Fox News desperately needs competition on the right. If the entire market one millimeter to the right of CNN is all theirs, they get fat, dumb and lazy. Murdoch and Ailes fell apart like a rained-on Sunday paper when Bammie challenged them a couple of years ago. That’s when word went out to ‘tone it down’.

What percentage of MSLSD’s air time is comprised of Chrissy “Bad Acid” Matthews’ ranting Ogabe love fests, massive mood swings, generally going berserk, talking over then having his spittle squeegeed off of show “guests”?

American TV news is truly awful when compared to what you can access online.

I generally like Fox News, but there’s waaay too much gabbing and cutesiness going on. Over the last five years especially, I’m not really in the mood to see people paid well to yuck it up while Rome burns.

Oh, and Fox needs to lose the Libtard “analysts”. This fair and balanced approach has done zilch to deflect criticism from the Left, and more shamefully from our own elected officials. But I guess it is amusing in a way to see said Libtards who really hate Fox News cashing checks signed by Roger Ailes.

In all the hand-wringing over commentary vs. news on cable networks, we are offered Fox News as reliant on right-leaning commentary and MSNBC as its left-leaning foil, while CNN sits in the middle with lots of news gathering and no ratings. In reality, Fox News (45-55) is much more comparable with CNN (55-45) in its percentage of straight news vs. commentary, while MSNBC is far out on a limb, relying on commentary for a staggering 85 percent of its programming.

MKH

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When you say “… we are offered …” in that first line, WHO is doing the “offering”?

How is this surprising? MSNBC is not intended to be “cable news,” it is intended to be a live video version of liberal talk radio, which was chased off the airwaves for all the sucking it did. They’ve got to shoehorn that in somewhere, and maybe give a small bit of news to people to keep them thinking that MSNBC is somehow relevant to today’s world.

Hot Air is some group to talk. All you produce is autostart commercials! You have so many commercials, I can’t even find them on the sidebar to stop them. I think I am going to cut back on Hot Air. You finally did it.